Keith just to clarify, I wasn’t questioning whether your GA animals were deliberately crossed into gioni but was wondering if there was the chance that the actual geographic locality that produced the founder stock would indicate influence.
After a little bit of searching I would have to say that it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Statenville GA is in Echols County which boarders Florida’s panhandle and though Tift County does not directly boarder the panhandle, it is from what I can tell almost due north of ANF.
If we can accept the fact that gene flow occurs between goini and easterns to the point that “pure” goini are becoming increasingly hard to find then we should logically be able to accept that this gene flow goes both ways.
In the late 80’s I picked up 1.2 gioni from Mark Bell. 1.1 were typical oval phased gioni and the other female was a partially striped animal. Through selective breeding I was producing high numbers of pure “looking” patternless animals in 3 short generations. I bring this up because I think a similar thing is happening with these GA animals. It appears to me that what is happening is that the line is being selectively bred for traits we find attractive. In short to look similar to goini. Whether this is possible because of the natural diversity of kings or as a result of genetic influence from an adjacent subspecific I can’t say for sure but I would tend to credit gene flow given the proximity of the founder stock to ANF.
In any case this is a great example of how inarticulate our notions of locality and “purity” are. Here we have locality snakes that, in the course of two generations, have been selectively bred and now express features, greatly exaggerated from those of the founding individuals. It isn’t much of a stretch to say that captivity is the locality because we aren’t striving for a phenotype that would likely have been selected for within the initial founding populations.
All that said they are awesome and unique kingsnakes. Put me on the list!!
